Russell Ramblings: The week school began

Welcome to the first edition of Russell Ramblings - my weekly homeschool update from Russell Homestead.

Before I tell you about our week of homeschooling, let me briefly introduce the little Russells.  (Read more about me here.)

AJ, age 6, first grade

CJ, age 5, kindergarten

JJ, age 3

MJ, age 1

Baby #5 due in a few weeks

The first day of school was kicked off with pancakes in the shape of their grades.  

We began our year with a unit study on the letter U and learning about "us" and our five senses.  We use My Father's World (MFW) as our core curriculum.  (Read our 2016-2017 curriculum picks here.)  Since MFW is set up to use a family approach in the older years, we are adjusting their kindergarten and grade 1 curriculum (which are not set up do multiple ages) to use with both AJ and CJ.  We are doing the kindergarten curriculum with both of them, with JJ tagging along where he is interested.  However, for AJ's math and language arts, we are using the first grade curriculum.

Each day of the unit we learned about a different sense.  We did activities such as reaching into a bag using our sense of touch and guessing what was in there, looking at a variety of objects and guessing which one was removed when our eyes were closed, and identifying sounds with our eyes closed.  The boys were fascinated to learn there is a hammer, anvil, and stirrup in our ears.  I found myself learning new things about the eye as we read books off of MFW's recommended book list.  (MFW provides a list of living books you can get from your local library or purchase that complements their curriculum.  We have found this to be a fantastic resource!)  We studied how the pupil is like a hole through which light enters.  It shrinks to restrict light and grows to allow more light.

One resource we are planning to use this year is nature journals.  One aspect of MFW that I appreciate is their focus on getting kids outside.  We did two entries in their journals this week.  First, we went outside with our nature journals and found 3 things we could smell.  Below are three of their picks - tomatoes, zinnias, and a shrub.

On another day, we took our nature journals outside looking for things we could feel and describing them - a hard rock, a smooth leaf, and a bumpy apple tree trunk.

In language arts, CJ focused on the short u sound and learning to blend sounds with a blend ladder.  AJ focused on learning the digraphs sh, ch, and th.
In math, AJ worked on learning shapes.

The boys also had their first science lesson with Daddy this week using Exploration Education's Elementary physical science kit.  While building a model car, they learned the definition of science, force, and matter.

All in all, it was a wonderful start to the school year.  It feels good to fall back into a routine after carefree summer days!

This post is linked to the weekly wrap up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.